The 2021 Gold Award of the Cyprus Education Leaders Awards 2021 of @BOUSSIASCyprus, was awarded to Alexander College and the Alexander Research Center. Our research “The Relationship of Cypriot Youth with the Social Media and the Internet/ CYYOUTH-SNS-ACT”,
won the highest honorary distinction in the Research category of these unique Education annual awards. The award confirms the quality and competence of both teachers and students in research, criteria that were key prerequisites in this category of applications.
The research was sponsored by the National Agency for Addictions in Cyprus, the Cyprus Youth Board and the Hellenic Bank.
The research team consisted of:
Kostas Christodoulides, Coordinator
Konstantina Intziegianni, Data Analysis Manager
Antonis Mappouridis, Data Collection Manager
Pavlina Antoniou, Consultant
Petroula Hadjifoti, Consultant and the Research Committee of Students of Alexander College.
Originality contributions of the research project
THE CYYOUTH-SNS-ACT
1. Contributes to the study of a new problem that has not been adequately considered in Cyprus.
2. Contributes with new findings such as the identification of a “dark aspect” of Social Networking Systems and the Internet that is, the excessive use by a notable portion of the youth population in Cyprus in order to institutionalize surveillance and mitigation policies that do not exist in Cyprus, unlike abroad.
3. It applies for the first time in the Cypriot environment, internationally validated scales for measuring Social Media addiction and problematic use of the Internet, allowing comparability with international data.
4. Students, members of the Alexander Student Research Committee, were trained and experienced the practical application of the theory from the connection of the goal with the methodology, the ethical parameter to the collection of data and their registration through a statistical model (SPSS).
